


your life as a transient variable

by pepperfield



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Cantonese Language, Chinese New Year, Ching Ming Festival, Diaspora, Family, Gen, Minor Chris "Chowder" Chow/Caitlin Farmer, questionable use of a tree metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-28 23:11:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10841439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepperfield/pseuds/pepperfield
Summary: Chris gets older, but he never quite manages to feel less adrift.





	your life as a transient variable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sapphee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphee/gifts).



> This fic is for [sapphee](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphee/pseuds/sapphee) and is heavily inspired by her Chowder headcanons, which can be found [here](http://omgcphee.tumblr.com/tagged/chowder-pheels)! Please go read them!
> 
> This is also mostly just me projecting onto Chowder, so it's terribly disjointed and shouldn't necessarily be taken as representative of any Chinese American experience besides my own. But I hope you will enjoy it anyway! Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Also, sorry about all the weird Cantonese romanizations that I kind of made up!

Christopher is five (almost six!) and his fingers are stuck together because he put too much glue on the back of Jessie’s paper circle even though Ms. D told him to use just a dot. It’s hard, but he manages to paste his sister’s disembodied crayon-drawing head right next to his own on the trunk of the tree, only a little crooked. Mom and Dad float above them in the construction paper leaves, smiling and also a bit crooked, with the same crayola brown eyes and single stroke scribbles of black hair. 

At the bottom of the paper are the words MY FAMLY TREE in confident sharpie. Chris is good at writing but bad at spelling. It’s okay, though. He’s good at a lot of other things, like skating and eating and being nice to friends.

He gives his finished tree to Ms. D, who tells him it’s fantastic and that he can go play in the block area with Josh and Micah, but he lingers behind to watch her hang his collage on the wall next to Alyssa’s. They don’t really make a tree, him and Jess and Mom and Dad. They’re more like a small, square shrub.

He’d wanted to make branches for _po po_ and _gung gung_ , and one for _ma ma_ , but maybe not for _yeh yeh_ since he's dead, and dead people should be in the ground, not in the trees, but then he would need to add more branches next to Mom and Dad. Cause there's _kau fu_ and _kau mou_ and Audrey and James, and _yi yi_ , and _baak baak_ and Aunt Heather, and the triplets, and everybody else who lives in Irvine, oh and _yi ma_ and _yi jeung_ and the cousins who live in L.A., and that's another five people. And that's not even counting all the aunties and uncles who live across the country, or the aunties and uncles who live across the ocean.

But that's too many branches, Ms. D had said, when Chris finished drawing all his faces, the black crayon worn down to a stump from scratching out so much hair. She said he could take them home if he wanted, his extra branches, his extra family, but it felt weird, so he and Micah ripped his drawing into ribbons instead, to decorate the rest of the paper piled high in the recycling bin.

Ms. D says he did a good job, but Chris doesn’t find it very gratifying. Still, he’s five, and there are better things to do at this age than mope about a school project. Gemma asks him if he wants to play with legos, and he quickly forgets about his dissatisfaction.

When Chris is in high school, he finds his tree buried under piles of his other kindergarten junk in a box his parents have stored away in a closet. It’s grown stiff with age, and even as he thumbs down a folded corner with a sort of amused nostalgia (even back then, he’d drawn himself wearing a Sharks hoodie), he wonders about the sensibility of the whole thing. Why do family trees grow backwards, from leaves to the trunk? What was the point of making a tree clipped of all its sprawling branches and twigs, stripped of its history?

He notices belatedly that the trunk is a solid brown rectangle of paper pasted straight onto the grass. He hadn’t cut out any roots.

That’s accurate, Chris sighs to himself. He’s a tree without roots.

\--

Chris is seven and he quits Chinese school because all they ever learn is baby stuff like colors and numbers. He already knows all those things! He hears his family using those words all the time, so what’s the point in learning it again in school? Sure, it's fun to see his friends there, but hockey is _so much cooler_ than Chinese school. He’d much rather spend more time at the rink, and he pesters his parents until they give in and allow him to quit.

It’s not like he’s missing out on much anyway.

\--

Chris is twelve and terrible at stirring, which is why Jess elbows him out of the way and takes the poker from his hand.

“You’re so bad at this,” she teases, breaking a clump of banknotes apart so that the fire suffocating in the ash can lick up and away, curling paper into smoke and soot as it goes. She keeps prodding and stirring as everybody else throws in more and more fake $10,000 bills and gold-leafed sheets into the bin. The joss paper folded into taels has already been tossed in and burnt to ash that’s now scattering dangerously close to the food laid out before great-uncle’s grave. Chris knows it’s dad’s uncle, who worked in the family restaurant with _yeh yeh_ when dad was growing up, but he doesn’t remember how to say his title, or what’s written on the headstone, so he hangs out with Lauren and Mike, who ask him about San Francisco and how middle school is going, and about all the cool things they’d bring him to see in New York if he ever visits. 

It’s a time of remembrance, a memorial day, but [tomb-sweeping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingming_Festival) has always been something akin to a family holiday like Christmas, or Lunar New Year. A chance to pay respects and see all his cousins and eat his grandparent’s delicious food. _Suk suk_ ’s family and _gu je_ ’s family are both in town, and it’s a whole cloud of them all clustered here in the front of the grave.

What they’re talking about fills and filters through Chris like he’s a windsock, English and Cantonese and stray strands of Toisanese that surround him in an only half-comprehensible tapestry of noise. But even though so much is lost on him, it still sounds like home. Part of the soundtrack of his life.

Dad calls him over and Chris bows once, twice, three times, then steps aside for Jess to take her turn. The incense sticks burn out slowly from where they’re jutting out of the grass, smoke rising from the precariously balanced layer of ashes not yet shaken loose from the incense. All throughout the cemetery are other families, other people making the same yearly pilgrimage. Watching them curiously, with their traditions just like his but perhaps with more firecrackers and fresh chicken, Chris wonders if their ancestors are like his, scattered between different cemeteries, different states, two whole countries and an ocean between. He wonders if their fragile roots are like his: many and shallow and tender, but tenacious enough not to shrivel up and die just yet.

 _Ma ma_ , the same height as him, with her age-softened, scarred hands and her still dry smile, pulls him over to eat, plying him with a bowl full of broad noodles and bean sprouts with plenty of chili oil the way he likes it. It’s her way of saying _I love you_ , and the hug and smile he gives her is his way of saying it back.

Around him, graves stretch on all the way down the rolling green hills, and Chris has to think maybe it’s strange that once a year he feels most at home standing here among the dead surrounded by love.

\--

Chris is sixteen and clutching his popcorn, hoping that he can read the subtitles well enough from where he’s sitting at the back of the theater with his friends. Henry shushes him gently as the trailers start, because he’s still kind of gushing excitedly about how he’s never seen a Chinese movie in theaters before - any exposure to Asian cinema has been through bootleg DVDs bought 3 for $20 at one of those tiny basement video stores tucked between a restaurant and a hair salon.

So maybe he’s vibrating out of his seat a little while shoveling popcorn into his mouth (he’s supposed to get braces soon, so he wants to enjoy it while he can), but he does calm down once the actual film starts.

And, oh, it’s a strange pinprick of disappointment that sticks him in the back when he hears the first line of dialogue. It’s in Mandarin. Obviously. He should’ve known.

It’s a perfectly good movie, but Chris can’t help but feel a delay before every punchline and emotional beat that his friends don’t have to worry about.

He’s not proficient in Cantonese either, but at least those words flow like water around him, natural and right. At least he can understand enough patchwork pieces to sew together a narrative that he feels like he understands, using English just to fill in the gaps.

On a good day, when his brain is cooperating, he can hold short conversations, enough to tell _po po_ over the phone that yes, he already ate dinner and of course he's studying hard, and yes, he'll tell Jess she needs to eat more _choy_. When the words don't slip out of his grasp like a puck sailing past his gloves, he can function, for short periods of time, in a public capacity. Enough to order takeout, enough to get a box of buns at the bakery, and pay with correct change.

But it never seems to be a good day when Chris needs it most. All the words that make so much sense when other people say them remain hidden in the pockets of memory that he can’t ever seem to uncover. Those words that come easy to his grandparents and a select few of his cousins don’t belong to Chris. He has no business saying them.

So when his brain isn’t cooperating, all he remembers is the baby stuff. Colors. Numbers. 

And here, not even that’s enough. Because his language, the one that feels like home, well, it’s barely even his. And it rarely seems to be anyone else’s either.

\--

Chris is nineteen and he misses home with a deep, gnawing ache in his chest.

It’s too cold in Massachusetts. Too far from the Pacific Ocean. 

It isn’t bad here, but it’s different in ways that make his heart hurt when he hangs up the phone after talking to his mom.

He’s taking Chinese again now that he’s at college, but it’s Mandarin, because that’s what Samwell has. It’s more useful anyway, everyone says. It’s what they speak in China, and you’re Chinese, everyone says. Isn’t it what your family speaks, everyone says. 

It’s not the same, he doesn’t say.

But he’s trying, in any case, to reconnect to those roots that he never really managed to grow, that he didn’t fully realize he _wanted_ until he was unearthed and replanted across the country in a place with crumbling dirt and too much dang snow.

He doesn’t realize how down he’s getting about it until Nursey comments one day while he’s hanging out in the computer lab with Chris and Dex, who are working on a problem set together. 

“You okay, C? You seem...out of it recently,” Nursey says as he loses at another round of minesweeper. 

Chris stops typing to look at him. Nursey just waits patiently for him to answer. He knows when Chris needs a minute to get out what he really wants to say, instead of whatever words come out easiest. “Oh, I’ve just been feeling a little homesick, I guess.”

He hopes they don’t think he’s a wimp, still feeling homesick even though they’ve already passed a whole semester at Samwell. He knows they won’t be mean or anything, but he also knows sometimes the upperclassmen all think of him as the baby of the team, and he doesn’t want to feed into that.

But Nursey hums sympathetically and Dex just nods even as he throws his mouse back down on the pad. “Me too. The food’s just not the same, right?” Dex asks. He looks both present and distant, and Chris figures he must be missing his five siblings and his parents’ home-cooked meals.

“Yeah, that’s definitely part of it. Nothing beats my grandma’s cooking, but I’d be happy even to get Chinese food around here once in awhile.” Not that he dislikes the local delivery place’s lo mein and general gau’s and crab rangoon, but he misses some of the less Americanized stuff that he usually relies on his parents to order.

“There’s a Chinatown in Boston,” Nursey says thoughtfully. “I mean- I don’t know if that’s what you’re looking for, sorry if I’m being ignorant, but it might be better than nothing?”

“No, that would actually be great! I think.” Chris had seen it briefly during the Taddy Tour, when they passed through Boston for fun on their way up to New York for his other college visits. They'd only stopped to get caffeine and a snack at a squished little bakery, but there’d been something kindly familiar about the whole process that had been missing from all the chain coffee shops. Maybe this is what he needs. But, “I'm not sure how I'd get there though. I’d have to look up the commuter rail schedule.” The station’s a long, long walk away.

“I’ve got a car,” Dex offers, shrugging when they turn to look at him. “I haven’t used it much since I came here, but if you’ve got directions, I can drive us.”

Chris almost refuses because he knows Dex doesn't really like the city, but he suddenly wants this so much that he temporarily forgets his better manners and how to say no. While he's dithering Nursey pipes up, perhaps because he sees Chris floundering, or perhaps because he just can't give up an opportunity to chirp Dex. “Sure, you can drive, but can you park? You can't just roll your tractor up to the front door, okay? They’ll ticket the hell outta you.”

“Shut up, Nurse, I live in _Maine_ , not the little house on the prairie,” Dex says, but he's not angry when he uses his foot to send Nursey and his chair wheeling away. “Of course I can fucking park. Chowder, you free tomorrow morning? We should leave early if we wanna beat the traffic.”

“Um, yeah,” Chris is saying before he knows how to stop, and Nursey’s rolled his way back, throwing an arm around him, weighty and comforting on Chris’ shoulders.

“ ‘Swawesome. We can go have lunch!”

They leave early enough to get a parking spot without sending Dex into a rage spiral, and take a selfie in front of the gate like tourists because Chris likes preserving memories. They wander the streets and Chris is happy just to soak it all in: signs he can barely read over the windows of crowded restaurants, plastic tables set up on the sidewalk selling ripe fruit, strangers that look like him speaking the language of home.

Dim sum is more of a struggle than Chris is proud of, but the place they go to has a laminated picture menu that they can write on to order. Nursey drinks through almost an entire pot of tea on his own, Dex decides [_ha gow_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Har_gow) is his new favorite food, and Chris successfully asks for ice water, forks, and extra napkins without the waiter thinking he’s an idiot.

They hit the bakeries next, and there’s way more of them than Chris would expect in a half mile radius. Then they buy takeout for dinner while they have the chance because he’s not going to make Dex drive him up to Boston every other weekend. After they’re overloaded with boxes and bags, Chris picks a bubble tea place at random, and he and Nursey chirp Dex about his eternal bafflement at tapioca pearls.

Being here with them is fun, and it’s easy the way his new world and this slice of his old world weave together. For this moment in time, at least, Chris feels like he can have it all.

\--

Chris is twenty-one and desperately hoping his best friends don’t accidentally burn themselves as they fiddle with the bamboo steamer.

“Dex, it’s fine, stop touching it,” Nursey says, jostling Dex out of the way with a shoulder.

“It’s crooked,” Dex argues, poking the [_fat gou_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fa_gao) in their foil muffin wrappers around so they’re less crowded. “What if the water gets in somehow?”

“Guys! You’re going to burn your hands!” Chris is trying not to stress, but the water in the pot is already boiling, and if they keep messing around Nursey will most certainly get injured, and Dex will most certainly throw something. 

“Babe, leave them,” Cait says, bumping him with her hip. “They’ll have to learn eventually.” She continues stirring melted sugar syrup into the flour. The [_nin gou_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nian_gao) batter is turning into the thick paste that Chris recognizes. As he helps her spoon it into the prepared pan, his d-men finally stop quibbling and pop the borrowed glass pot lid over the steamer. They remain crowded around the stove, waiting for the _fat gou_ to split and bloom. Chris could tell them it’s going to take a bit, but Caitlin distracts him with a kiss, her hand pressed gently to his cheek. 

Her blue eyes are clear and dark and he can’t help the rush of love he feels for her when she presses their foreheads together before giving him space again.

“What’s up?” she asks, because she always knows when he’s feeling nervous. It shows in your eyebrows, she’d told him with a laugh, smoothing a thumb against his forehead when it wrinkled in skepticism.

“I just hope it turns out okay,” Chris says, jiggling the pan in his hands. It’s heavy and smells like golden brown sugar and the new year. “I don’t wanna mess it up and give Chinese desserts a bad rep.” He doesn’t want to fail, doesn’t want to add to that shroud of disappointment that he’s never learned to shake off his shoulders.

“It’ll be great,” she says firmly. “We followed your aunt’s instructions exactly.”

“What if the ratios were off, and they don’t split? What if they taste _awful_ , cause I put in salt, or-”

“C, chill, it’s gonna be fine. We got this.”

“Nursey’s right. We did every step perfectly, Chowder. Look, they’re already starting to crack at the top a little bit.” Dex beckons at Chris and Cait with one hand until they come over, watching the risen dome of batter slowly crack open. There’s a strange relief that comes from seeing the cake start to blossom, like absolution. His roots are still weaker than he’d like, but maybe it’s okay. Maybe he can still bloom anyway.

He sends a picture to his family later of the finished product. It’s a candid shot that catches Dex and Nursey in the background frying up a few slices of fresh _nin gou_ , and Cait smiling at the camera like she’s just caught him looking. Jess texts him a string of smilies right away, and Mom sends back a photo of them eating dinner with her side of the family for the new year.

Chris looks up from his bed that night at the stack of red envelopes he left on his desk under a tangerine. It’s another family holiday that he’s spending away from the family, but he’s grown used to it now, after three years. California is still so very far away, Hong Kong and Guangdong even farther, but Chris has come to think of Samwell as a second home. 

It’ll never be everything he needs, but Chris thinks that might be true of everywhere he goes. But he’ll be alright. He’s strong enough to grow anywhere. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [the name game](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12285123) by [sapphee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphee/pseuds/sapphee)




End file.
